Englilsh v Irish styles

Whistle
1

I bought my first tin whistle about forty years ago but I’ve only ever dabbled with them a little so I am still a beginner!

I love Irish instrumental music and the fluid style in which Irish tin whistle is played, but my musical environment is entirely English. If I want to join in a typical English session would it be appropriate to play in the Irish manner or would I have to play in the staccato, tongued style?

I am aware that the Irish style can itself vary between a more or less fluid approach, but when I went to a tin whistle workshop about a year ago the person running it was very insistent that he was not teaching Irish style and insisted that every note should be tongued as if playing a recorder.

Conversely, I attended a similar workshop in Cornwall about a decade ago where a more fluid approach was taken.

I’m confused. What is possible? What would be acceptable?

Stormalong

2

What do you mean by an “english session”? Morris tunes? Playford dances?

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In any case, your informant’s nostrum is far too categorical. Very little is known about the playing styles of much of the historical repertoire.

3

play however you want to play-----------dont worry about style ------i dont think there in one person here who plays any one tune the same -----------its all personal ornamentation

4

I disagree with this. If you want to play a certain type of music, you should use the ornamentation that is appropriate to that type of music. That doesn’t mean dogmatically following rules, but it doesn’t mean ignoring the world around you, either.

5

Stormalong,

Why not play the way that you are comfortable with, that would be acceptable. Don’t get bogged down by what style to play, what tonguing to use etc as long as the tune you are playing has some musical fluidity and moves along with what everyone else is doing.
I would suggest not too much of anything ie tonguing every note will soon get boring for you and anyone listening. Ornamention can be introduced once the tunes are familiar to your fingers and head.
Lastly you can listen to good Irish players and copying their ways of playing won’t hurt in playing English tunes.

Dave.

6

Basically tunes from the Lewes Arms book:

http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/pub-session-tunes/idxv2bs.htm

Stormalong

7

Some morris tunes have a staccato quality that probably doesn’t work as well played “irish-style”, but the random tune I picked and played in my head sounded OK to me.

~~

I sometimes think there’s a basic disconnect between how folk and conservatory see music, particularly danse music.

Many trained musicians are too tied to the score. I once asked on a playford tune site about the pallate or ornament appropriate to the music.

They didn’t get it. Answers typically began something like, “first, start witha really good score…”, as if I was going to sit down with four repeats of the basic 16 bar melody all written out and all ornaments and variations carefully notated. It was a frustrating conversation.

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Folk musicians understand that it’s 16 bars, ya gotta play a bunch of repeats, and they’re going to get bored doing it over and over if they don’t mix it up. Just like irish music.

So, they probably played something more like irish music than is common on the early music scene.

The thing is, we don’t know for sure HOW the melodies would be translated from the 16 bars in the manuscripts into however many bars of music it takes to do the dance, whatever that is.

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So play how you like.

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You’re going to want to have both techniques at your, err, fingertips, anyway, so learn and practice some tunes each way, so that if you DO end up in a session in which the music or the session nazi demands a particular technique, you can do it.

And at times you’re going to need to keep yourself amused, so you’ll likely want to have the ability to mix it up while playing a single tune, for the sake of emphasis or variety.

8

Music can be looked at from different points of view: The music itself, but also the musical context, tradition, culture, whatever. The context makes that certain things are done, and others not done. The further away you live from that culture the more freedom in the music. That’s what I like, freedom in the way music is played. Music should in the first place be part of yourself. I live in the Netherlands, so far away enough not to bother too much with the irish tradition in what should and shouldn’t in playing the music. Great bands like Lunasa and Flook get their musical influences from other cultures and even jazz is part of their musical style. So back to the basic, I totally agree with Dave.

9

i did not say " ignore the world around you" -I said --------its all personal ornamentation-------------you ,on the other hand ,just contradicted yourself ------ first you say one must play appropriate to the tune and then one must not dogmatically follow rules-----------------------------before you slam someone examine yourself

10

Why take things so personally Cavefish? There’s always a road in the middle.

11

there is all kinds of roads my friend-----------that was my point dont be confined to exactness, express oneself----that is what i tried to say anyway :smiley:

12

And I think that’s what’s been said by everyone, personal within the boundaries of the context.

13

I’m sorry if I came off as harsh or contradictory.

Playing only what you want to play, ignoring style, is indeed ignoring the world around you. It’s using your own judgement to the loss of others’, which is completely contradictory to the whole idea of traditional music. Maybe that’s not quite waht you meant, but that’s how I took it, sorry- after all, here is stormalong asking for what is acceptable, and you go and tell him not to care about that, not to worry about style. This will get a musician nowhere.

How is it contradictory to play what’s appropriate and accepted, without chaining yourself to any style’s rules? What’s so strange about that? Doing everything the accepted way is stale and impersonal- but refusing to follow, to some extent, the rules within a given tradition, and then attempting to play within that tradition, just makes for poor music, a lot of the time.

14

Rules and Styles seem to be getting in the way here. What do they actually mean?

Surely if someone plays a tune that he/she has heard or seen and plays that tune with some fluidity ie with decent rhythmn and articulation, that persons own style will have to come through. If they are interested enough in the music then ornamentation and such like will follow naturally in it’s own good time.

The only rules I can think of are to play in the same key as everyone else, keep the rhythmn that the tunes requires, listen and be sympathetic to what other players are doing and if all that is working then hey presto you should have half decent music… and of course get a round of drinks in occasionally.

Dave.

15

No worries mate , thanks for the apology— i apologise too-------this is how it should be here --------------no arguements just fun :thumbsup:

16

English fiddler Chris Bartram points out that because traditional music in england was ‘saved’ from extinction at (almost literally) the last minute, the entire tradition was in much worse shape. Most of the source musicians were old men, nearly all hadn’t been playing much in the years previous, and were being recorded/transcribed by collectors who wanted to get the tune down, not the style. He points out that the one fiddle player (I forget the name, but you can google his home page and search for his essay on english fiddle style) who was recorded during his prime sounded a whole lot more like an irish fiddle player than we think english traditional music should.

17

In any case, the best advice anyone can give or get is just to be sensitive to the session you find yourself in. If it seems like a strict Irish-trad session, then play that way, if you’re able. If it seems looser and more open to diversity, then try something different. The people who tend to go afoul are the ones who listen more closely to themselves than to those around them.

18

I’m not sure that’s true: sometimes the people who have emigrated and taken the culture with them try very hard to keep it “pure” in their new location, while the ones who’ve stayed at home are free to vary and experiment because no one calls them “Un-WHATEVER” in their own country.

I’m travelling in Ireland at the moment, and have seen a trad session led by a guy who played the bongos more often than he played his bodhran. I’m picking this wouldn’t have been regarded right anywhere else in the world …

19

Mary said that I said…

DaveAuty wrote:
The further away you live from that culture the more freedom in the music.

and I didn’t it was Arnie, honest guv!